In collage, since the 20th century, artists found the possibility to create fantastic, unreal compositions using images from their surroundings: cutouts from photographs, newspapers, and magazines.
I'm going to get a bit theoretical here...
Collage is not just an artistic technique, it's also a way of thinking, of understanding fragmented reality. Burger, when describing avant-garde artwork, referred to it as a fragmented work, and that's exactly what collage is. The artist takes fragments from different realities and by placing them on the same plane, gives them a new meaning, different from their original sense. Burger borrows from Walter Benjamin the concept of allegory to explain the early collages in the avant-gardes. These do not present a totality or a unity, nor an organicity between their parts; the allegorical gathers isolated fragments of reality and gives them meaning.
First by the Cubists and then by the Futurists and Dadaists, along with the technological advances that were developing such as photography and cinema (another way of assembling images), collage was rediscovered in the arts. What the avant-gardes proposed at that time was a rupture, in broad terms, from the traditional ideas about art in all its aspects.
In the Cubist work "Still Life with a Braided Chair" from 1912, created by Pablo Picasso, we see added a woven chair fabric. Cubism not only changed the way of representing reality, but this work has a piece of reality presented through collage.
The only rule is that Collage is for everyone
When we do collage, we feel free, it's a technique without rules. Anyone with their hands and the materials they have at home can start making collage. It's not necessary to learn how to draw the human body or how to paint with oils, you just need to know how to cut and paste. You're not too young or too old to treat yourself to a moment of creation.
Today, collage is a widely recognized technique, not only in the "analog" form with paper, scissors, and glue, but if we add new technologies, digital photography, and digital editing programs to this, we have endless possibilities and tools to incorporate into our creations.
Every journey is different, but there are some recommendations I would have liked to know before starting to make collage. First, gather everything you need: magazines, newspapers, colored paper, glue, old photographs; go through your house in search of papers or objects that you can incorporate into your collages. You'll be surprised by this treasure hunt. Then, bring all the materials to your workspace, so you can create without distractions without having to go out to look for anything. Finally, choose a good playlist and let yourself be carried away by cutting old magazines.
What is the creative process in my collages like?
First, I review and cut magazines, newspapers. I look for tickets, photos, tickets, different papers, cutouts of words. I look at previous cutouts.
Based on what I found, I make a selection and try several times how the cutouts would be arranged on the page until I find the version that I like the most and fits what I thought about what I found.
The cutouts I don't use are stored in albums that are organized by phrases, words, themes, colors, etc.
If I haven't figured out how to finish it, I keep looking in magazines or albums, otherwise I save the cutouts in a folder and continue it later.
When I decide on the final version, I carefully glue the cutouts to the page and sign it.
I hope this post inspires you, and on your next free afternoon, you enjoy a good collage session.